0:00:13 > 0:00:18MAN: Throughout human history, there has been a deep cry for myth.
0:00:18 > 0:00:24We need the stories because we need some kind of access to the sacred,
0:00:24 > 0:00:27or access to ultimate questions.
0:00:27 > 0:00:32Yet, even more, we need some kind of experience of mythic events.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40SLOW CHORAL SONG
0:00:43 > 0:00:47HE SPEAKS JAPANESE
0:00:49 > 0:00:52I got a ticket. I got it!
0:00:52 > 0:00:54Here it is.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07This is not just a night out at the movies, this is a party.
0:01:12 > 0:01:20Star Wars is fulfilling something like a religious urge that people have.
0:01:20 > 0:01:28There is something very intense about the primary experience of going to the temple, waiting in line,
0:01:28 > 0:01:30and being with your fellows
0:01:30 > 0:01:35all in the same costume and sharing this intense experience.
0:01:35 > 0:01:41So powerful is the cult surrounding George Lucas' Star Wars films,
0:01:41 > 0:01:47it's hard to imagine that not such a long time ago...
0:01:47 > 0:01:51the director was struggling to find form for his original story.
0:01:51 > 0:01:57What I was working to try to do was to write a modern fairytale.
0:01:57 > 0:02:00I'd become intrigued with mythology
0:02:00 > 0:02:05and fairytales as a form of psychological archaeology.
0:02:05 > 0:02:11You can understand the psychology of people who lived 3,000 years ago by the stories they told.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15So I was trying to pull things down,
0:02:15 > 0:02:20to find common threads that went through lots of different mythology.
0:02:20 > 0:02:25I became friends with Joe Campbell. That's the research he'd been doing.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28MUSIC: Star Wars theme
0:02:28 > 0:02:34Joseph Campbell didn't own a television. He rarely went to the movies.
0:02:34 > 0:02:40But 12 years after his death, he's a hero to many in Hollywood.
0:02:40 > 0:02:47Some of the most successful films ever were shaped by a book he wrote half a century ago -
0:02:47 > 0:02:49The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
0:02:49 > 0:02:55It was The Hero With A Thousand Faces that just said,
0:02:55 > 0:03:01here is the story, here is the end and the focus - it was all there.
0:03:01 > 0:03:08It had been there thousands of years, as Dr Campbell pointed out.
0:03:08 > 0:03:12If I hadn't run across it, I'd still be writing Star Wars today.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24What inspired the young George Lucas was Campbell's idea
0:03:24 > 0:03:30that myths followed an archetypal pattern involving a hero's journey.
0:03:30 > 0:03:36In a couple of sentences, the high concept of the hero's journey
0:03:36 > 0:03:41is that the hero leaves a somewhat comfortable, ordinary world,
0:03:41 > 0:03:45maybe with the help of a mentor.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49- What is it?- Your father's light sabre - the weapon of a Jedi knight.
0:03:49 > 0:03:55Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon.
0:03:55 > 0:04:01'He goes on a journey to a special world, which is different and dangerous.
0:04:01 > 0:04:06'There he encounters great forces, monsters,
0:04:06 > 0:04:10'or villains or enemies of some kind,
0:04:10 > 0:04:15'that put him through life-changing experience of death and resurrection.
0:04:15 > 0:04:20'Then, finally, the hero has to come home,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24'return and give closure to the story
0:04:24 > 0:04:31'by bringing back something from that special world to share with everybody else.'
0:04:36 > 0:04:40DIFFERENT MAN: The hero's journey is not an easy one.
0:04:40 > 0:04:45They take on not only their problems but the rest of the world's, too.
0:04:45 > 0:04:49And all this is in Campbell.
0:04:49 > 0:04:51And when you say "Campbell",
0:04:51 > 0:04:55it's a distillation of virtually all the storytelling
0:04:55 > 0:04:58of mankind.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02That's what he represents to me.
0:05:02 > 0:05:04He distilled them into pure ideas.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07You're a winner, Max.
0:05:07 > 0:05:12I'm not gonna lose you because of some crazy notion of quitting.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17You say people don't believe in heroes any more?
0:05:17 > 0:05:19Well, damn them!
0:05:19 > 0:05:25You and me, Max. We're gonna give them back the heroes!
0:05:34 > 0:05:38Why The Hero With A Thousand Faces?
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Well, because there is a certain, typical,
0:05:42 > 0:05:48hero sequence of actions, um...
0:05:48 > 0:05:54It can be detected in stories from all over the world
0:05:54 > 0:05:57and many periods of history.
0:05:57 > 0:06:04And I think it's essentially the one deed done by many, many different people.
0:06:04 > 0:06:09Joseph Campbell's model of an archetypal hero's journey
0:06:09 > 0:06:13wasn't written with movies in mind.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16It was the product of years spent studying,
0:06:16 > 0:06:21and comparing myths from different cultures from throughout time.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30Scholars for at least 100 years
0:06:30 > 0:06:32had carved out glorious careers
0:06:32 > 0:06:39by showing how different... people, ages, were.
0:06:39 > 0:06:45Campbell announced his theme in the preface to Hero With A Thousand Faces.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50He said, "I'm going to look for the correspondences and the analogues."
0:06:50 > 0:06:56"What is the secret of the timeless vision? From what profundity of the mind does it derive?
0:06:56 > 0:07:02"Why is mythology everywhere the same,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05"beneath its varieties of costume?"
0:07:05 > 0:07:09Campbell believed that myths were the masks of God.
0:07:09 > 0:07:16Myths are the sacred stories that changed from one culture to the other
0:07:16 > 0:07:20like masks in a great play.
0:07:20 > 0:07:27But behind the masks is a divine play. The great forces of the universe are played out in the myths.
0:07:27 > 0:07:32So to bring it closer to Campbell's first and probably most famous book,
0:07:32 > 0:07:38the hero is the one who personifies that struggle.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40There's only one story.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45It is the story human beings have been telling each other
0:07:45 > 0:07:51since they sat in caves, and that story could be called "the quest".
0:07:51 > 0:07:58The Holy Grail for contemporary writers is the secret of story structure -
0:07:58 > 0:08:01the key to creating compelling narrative.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05It is what the story is always, somehow, about.
0:08:05 > 0:08:10What was encouraging about reading A Thousand Faces
0:08:10 > 0:08:14was that I realised it is possible to discover a universal form.
0:08:14 > 0:08:21I took the methods of the principles that Campbell was using
0:08:21 > 0:08:25and applied it to all stories. And it's amazing
0:08:25 > 0:08:28how they resonate back and forth.
0:08:28 > 0:08:35Myth is a part of story, so the elements of myth correspond to the elements you find in ALL stories.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38That is story in a nutshell.
0:08:40 > 0:08:46And it is the same story we've been telling one another for tens of thousands of years.
0:08:57 > 0:09:02We were looking for a location in the centre of Australia
0:09:02 > 0:09:05for the third Mad Max.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10A place called Katajuta is a sacred site to the Aboriginals.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14It's like a cathedral to them.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18So we had to go and speak to the tribal elders
0:09:18 > 0:09:21and see if they were interested.
0:09:21 > 0:09:27People said we wouldn't have a shot because McDonald's had made a commercial
0:09:27 > 0:09:34using Ayers Rock as a bun with an aeroplane flying over the top and there was a big stink about that.
0:09:34 > 0:09:42So our location manager went and sat down with the tribal elders and he showed them our storyboards,
0:09:42 > 0:09:47and through a translator told them the story of the Mad Max trilogy.
0:09:47 > 0:09:51And at the end of it,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54they not only were very excited
0:09:54 > 0:10:00 but got up and, sort of, sang him a song at the end of it.
0:10:00 > 0:10:04And, er... we got the location.
0:10:04 > 0:10:11What happened was that George said that they recognised many of the motives in our story.
0:10:11 > 0:10:15They recognised that this had a mythological content,
0:10:15 > 0:10:21that it was larger than the mere contemporary issues of the time.
0:10:21 > 0:10:29So they understood that we were basically storytellers, we just used different techniques to them.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40The movies are the perfect medium
0:10:40 > 0:10:45 for expressing a mythic experience.
0:10:45 > 0:10:51I was really struck with this recently. I went to a museum in Berlin called the Pergamon Museum.
0:10:51 > 0:10:57They have reliefs that they looted from a temple in Asia Minor.
0:10:57 > 0:11:02They are just like a storyboard for a great special effects movie,
0:11:02 > 0:11:07about the battle between the gods and the giants.
0:11:07 > 0:11:13It's the same energy being expressed in a different medium.
0:11:21 > 0:11:26"The logic, the heroes and the deeds of myth
0:11:26 > 0:11:32"survive into modern times.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36"The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the romance of Beauty and the Beast,
0:11:36 > 0:11:41"stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue
0:11:41 > 0:11:45"waiting for the traffic light to change."
0:11:47 > 0:11:50Campbell thought of myths
0:11:50 > 0:11:54as the stories that bind people together.
0:11:54 > 0:12:00For the Jews, it could be the story of the Ark of the Covenant - a tribe-binding story.
0:12:00 > 0:12:07For Christians, it could be the myth of the crucifixion. It's a universal motif.
0:12:07 > 0:12:11The hero in cultures all over the world dies and resurrects.
0:12:11 > 0:12:16And as he or she does this, somehow life comes back to the entire people.
0:12:28 > 0:12:35The Catholic religion is a poetic religion. It's powerful, life-supporting.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38It's beautiful.
0:12:38 > 0:12:45Every month of the year has its poetic and spiritual value, and, boy, that got into me.
0:12:45 > 0:12:51And I'm sure that my interest in mythology comes out of that.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55Born in New York, in 1904,
0:12:55 > 0:13:02the young Campbell was soon looking beyond Catholicism to satisfy his appetite for ritual,
0:13:02 > 0:13:08visiting Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Madison Square Gardens.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22I was, from a very early date,
0:13:22 > 0:13:27as a kid around four or five years old, fascinated by American Indians.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34I went to school and had no problem with my studies.
0:13:34 > 0:13:40But my own enthusiasm was in this maverick realm
0:13:40 > 0:13:43of the American Indian mythology.
0:13:43 > 0:13:49And when I was about eleven or twelve,
0:13:49 > 0:13:56I had read all the books about Indians in the children's library and was admitted to the stacks.
0:13:56 > 0:14:00I think that's where my life as a scholar began. I know it did.
0:14:04 > 0:14:11My parents were very co-operative. They found a lovely place in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.
0:14:13 > 0:14:16And right nearby, was a man
0:14:16 > 0:14:20whose books about Indians I'd been reading.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27And so he became my first guru.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30His name was Elmer Gregor.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34He wrote boys' books about American Indians.
0:14:39 > 0:14:41Already as a boy,
0:14:41 > 0:14:49reading voraciously, he was noticing parallels between the Indian myths he had come to love
0:14:49 > 0:14:56and the myths/religious motifs of the Irish Catholicism that he was raised with.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00That, I think, is what really planted the seed,
0:15:00 > 0:15:06that no one people, no one tribe, could take a claim to all the great truths.
0:15:06 > 0:15:13Instead there were parallel stories from one side of the world to the other.
0:15:18 > 0:15:25At Columbia University, Campbell studied medieval literature,
0:15:25 > 0:15:28specialising in Arthurian legend.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31He was a dedicated student.
0:15:31 > 0:15:35But his greatest passion was not academic, but athletic.
0:15:43 > 0:15:49I think that meant more to me than anything else in my college years - the track.
0:15:49 > 0:15:57I think I learned more about living and what it takes to win and what it takes to lose - all of that.
0:16:01 > 0:16:06I got up there in the high brackets, you know.
0:16:06 > 0:16:12I could run as fast a half as anybody in the world at that time.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18I never have had the ability
0:16:18 > 0:16:21to let someone be ahead of me.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25Campbell's course seemed set
0:16:25 > 0:16:28for conventional academic success,
0:16:28 > 0:16:32 when his Arthurian studies took him to Europe.
0:16:32 > 0:16:39But there he encountered modern ideas in the form of Freud, Jung and James Joyce,
0:16:39 > 0:16:43which opened his mind to wider horizons.
0:16:43 > 0:16:48I went back to Columbia to go on with my work on the PhD,
0:16:48 > 0:16:52and told them, "This thing has opened out."
0:16:52 > 0:16:58They said, "Don't follow that. Stay where you were when you went to Europe." I said, "To hell with it."
0:16:58 > 0:17:04And on that, you might say I just retired to the woods.
0:17:04 > 0:17:09I went actually to Woodstock and just read
0:17:09 > 0:17:14and read and read for five years. No job, no money.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19In Woodstock, Campbell immersed himself in ideas he'd encountered in Europe.
0:17:19 > 0:17:25His ambition was to draw on mythic themes
0:17:25 > 0:17:29to write the great American novel.
0:17:29 > 0:17:35But the man who so influenced other storytellers, failed in his own attempts at fiction.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39Instead, in 1934, he took a job
0:17:39 > 0:17:45teaching comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence, a new women's college near New York.
0:17:45 > 0:17:50We all looked forward to going to a Campbell lecture.
0:17:50 > 0:17:53It was the highlight of the week.
0:17:53 > 0:18:01All of these tales, all of these myths, how he tied them together was nothing short of brilliant.
0:18:01 > 0:18:04He was a real presence.
0:18:08 > 0:18:13He was a man that you felt you were being stretched by
0:18:13 > 0:18:17every time you went into his lecture hall.
0:18:17 > 0:18:24And every time these diagrams appeared on the blackboard,
0:18:24 > 0:18:27you felt you had gained knowledge.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31And that's a very heady thing.
0:18:31 > 0:18:39As Campbell worked on his lecture notes, he arrived at the conclusion which inspired his most famous book.
0:18:43 > 0:18:48I realised then, and no-one could say otherwise, there's one mythology in the world.
0:18:48 > 0:18:55It had inflected in the various cultures in terms of their historical and social circumstances,
0:18:55 > 0:18:58but it's one mythology.
0:19:03 > 0:19:09Campbell's comparative approach to mythology wasn't only controversial,
0:19:09 > 0:19:16it was disdained by many scholars when The Hero Of A Thousand Faces first came out in 1949.
0:19:16 > 0:19:20It was believed that you washed away the differences, the nuances,
0:19:20 > 0:19:27from culture to culture to culture by simply pointing out the correspondences.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32The silver lining,
0:19:32 > 0:19:36the uncanniness about the public acceptance of the book
0:19:36 > 0:19:43is that creative souls everywhere seem to have known from the start what Campbell was trying to do.
0:19:50 > 0:19:55I think Watership Down
0:19:55 > 0:20:02owes everything to Joseph Campbell and The Hero Of A Thousand Faces
0:20:02 > 0:20:06because if I hadn't discovered Campbell and the hero,
0:20:06 > 0:20:10I wouldn't have been mentally free to write about the rabbits.
0:20:10 > 0:20:17"They climbed not over, but through, the sun-red grass, among the awakened insect movement
0:20:17 > 0:20:22"and the lighter blades.
0:20:22 > 0:20:24"The grass undulated about them.
0:20:24 > 0:20:29"They couldn't tell how far away the ridge might be.
0:20:29 > 0:20:34"They topped each short slope, only to find another above it."
0:20:36 > 0:20:40I think Watership Down
0:20:40 > 0:20:47conforms pretty well to Joseph's ideas of what an adventure epic consists of.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51Most of the things he pinpoints are mentioned.
0:20:51 > 0:20:56The fascinating thing is you never get bored with this.
0:20:56 > 0:21:00You never think, "This is Campbell, item 6A."
0:21:00 > 0:21:08I don't think I could have done it looking up Campbell as a reference book. It had to come out naturally.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12One of the big delights, and surprising delights,
0:21:12 > 0:21:18has been to find how my books have helped other people in the arts.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24And it's not that I tell people what to do,
0:21:24 > 0:21:32but it points out where the inspiration is and you, as an artist, move in and pull it out.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39The hero's journey is a metaphor for life,
0:21:39 > 0:21:42in the simplest possible terms.
0:21:42 > 0:21:47It's a metaphor for life from childhood to maturity to old age.
0:21:47 > 0:21:54It's a metaphor for the daily struggle to find sustenance and security in life
0:21:54 > 0:21:56against the forces of antagonism.
0:21:56 > 0:22:00It's recognition that we move forward in time,
0:22:00 > 0:22:06against our desires, our forces of antagonism, that we must overcome or we will not survive.
0:22:06 > 0:22:11"The first stage of the mythological journey,
0:22:11 > 0:22:16"which we have designated 'the call to adventure',
0:22:16 > 0:22:23"signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual centre of gravity
0:22:23 > 0:22:28"from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown."
0:22:29 > 0:22:34DISCORDANT CLANKING
0:22:34 > 0:22:40- What's the idea?- Bob needs help. The men are hiding in the rocks.
0:22:40 > 0:22:46- I tried to stop him, but couldn't. - I said he'd get in a mess. Let him get out of it. Back to work.
0:22:46 > 0:22:48'You remember those old westerns?'
0:22:48 > 0:22:55They would go like this. The bad guys roll into town, shoot the place up, kill the old sheriff.
0:22:55 > 0:23:01The townspeople gather and go to the livery stable now being run by the retired gun-slinger.
0:23:01 > 0:23:09They'd go, "The bad guys rolled into town, shot the place up, killed the sheriff. You gotta come to our aid."
0:23:09 > 0:23:16He'd resist that. He'd say, "No. I hung up my guns long ago. Get someone else."
0:23:16 > 0:23:23No wonder they call you Rawhide. You're hard. You have no feelings. You haven't any love.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27He would do everything possible to resist the call to adventure.
0:23:27 > 0:23:30But eventually he takes on the task.
0:23:30 > 0:23:32 Come on, boys. We're riding.
0:23:32 > 0:23:39'The call to adventure is simply the recognition that you can't live out of balance.
0:23:39 > 0:23:45'You can resist or ignore it, but sooner or later, you'll be moved to have to do something.'
0:23:45 > 0:23:49"We have not even to risk the adventure alone
0:23:49 > 0:23:53"for heroes of all time have gone before us.
0:23:53 > 0:24:00"The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path."
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Let's describe the descent
0:24:03 > 0:24:08into the labyrinth - it's a key stage in the journey.
0:24:08 > 0:24:12It describes the pain of the ordeal that's inevitable in human life
0:24:12 > 0:24:16if you are going through a transformation.
0:24:16 > 0:24:21Campbell found that particular motif for example, in the Old Testament,
0:24:21 > 0:24:27Jonah's descent into the belly of the whale is an ordeal that he goes through.
0:24:27 > 0:24:32But when he emerges from the whale, he's a transformed man.
0:24:34 > 0:24:37Think of Odysseus' descent
0:24:37 > 0:24:45into 19 years of wandering, as it were, through the labyrinth of the Greek islands
0:24:45 > 0:24:49before he can finally get back to Penelope in Greece.
0:24:49 > 0:24:53Luke Skywalker has to confront death.
0:24:53 > 0:24:57He has to go through the belly of the beast.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01He has to confront Darth Vader, which means the "death father".
0:25:06 > 0:25:09If you go back through history,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12all the arts have focused on mythology.
0:25:12 > 0:25:17It's one of the prime sources for all art.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21Whether it's graphic art, theatre or literature.
0:25:21 > 0:25:28I think it's because the emotional issues that are being dealt with are universal
0:25:28 > 0:25:30and important.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42When you're reading and reading and reading,
0:25:42 > 0:25:47you don't have time to do all the things that you want to do.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50Movies dropped out of my life a long, long time ago.
0:25:50 > 0:25:55When I was in Europe, a terrible change had taken place.
0:25:55 > 0:26:00When I left this country, we had only black and white silent movies.
0:26:00 > 0:26:05There was a wonderful art developing, of mime and all of that.
0:26:05 > 0:26:09I come back and you have talkies.
0:26:09 > 0:26:15I never really caught on to the talkies as...an interesting art.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20It's too naturalistic. Naturalism is the death of the arts.
0:26:20 > 0:26:26That's a problem in American arts. They don't understand the metaphor.
0:26:26 > 0:26:31For 40 years he hadn't seen a movie, a major Hollywood movie.
0:26:31 > 0:26:39When George Lucas introduced himself backstage at one of Campbell's lectures in San Francisco in 1985,
0:26:39 > 0:26:46as a local film maker "trying to make modern fairy tales and myths",
0:26:46 > 0:26:48Campbell was very interested.
0:26:48 > 0:26:53Lucas flew him from San Francisco to Skywalker Ranch.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56Over the course of a weekend,
0:26:56 > 0:27:00Joe was reintroduced into the world of the modern arts.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04My God! We had...
0:27:04 > 0:27:09We had Star Wars in the morning
0:27:09 > 0:27:15and The Empire Strikes Back in the afternoon and The Return of the Jedi in the evening.
0:27:15 > 0:27:18I tell you, I was really thrilled.
0:27:20 > 0:27:24Campbell was moved by the fact that another artist
0:27:24 > 0:27:31was trying to create a modern myth for the day.
0:27:31 > 0:27:35And his books had helped bring that about.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53I made the first Mad Max film without much insight
0:27:53 > 0:27:56into the process of story-telling.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59By some sort of luck
0:27:59 > 0:28:04it succeeded in most of the territories around the world.
0:28:04 > 0:28:09It was astonishing how it had resonances in places I didn't expect.
0:28:09 > 0:28:13In Japan they called it a Samurai movie.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15In Scandinavia he was a Viking.
0:28:15 > 0:28:19The French picked up that it was a western on wheels.
0:28:19 > 0:28:26I thought I was making this cheap action movie based in Australia, based on my culture.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29I really, for the first time,
0:28:29 > 0:28:35understood there was something afoot that was larger than my conceits.
0:28:35 > 0:28:38In trying to find out about it,
0:28:38 > 0:28:42I got on to Campbell who suddenly explained so much to me.
0:28:44 > 0:28:49'A man haunted by the demons of his past.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52'A man who wandered out into the wasteland.'
0:28:52 > 0:28:57By the time I made the second Mad Max,
0:28:57 > 0:29:00we'd really got into Campbell.
0:29:00 > 0:29:04He was like a guide, really.
0:29:08 > 0:29:15The biggest thing was the defining moment of the hero - the relinquishing of self-interest.
0:29:15 > 0:29:21'When they have to go through the darkest threshold.
0:29:21 > 0:29:25'They say, "It's not about me. It's about some greater good."'
0:29:25 > 0:29:31If it's all the same to you... I'll drive that tanker.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48CHRIS VOGLER: I've read about 10,000 screenplays.
0:29:48 > 0:29:53I keep seeing the same patterns over and over again.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02What The Hero's Journey can do for the writer is
0:30:02 > 0:30:07give them a map of this well-travelled territory.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11In a way, a map of the audience's experience of story.
0:30:15 > 0:30:17You can vary from that map,
0:30:17 > 0:30:24but it pays to understand what the audiences are programmed to expect
0:30:24 > 0:30:28from having seen thousands of stories built on this mould.
0:30:28 > 0:30:32I look at it as a road map for the writers.
0:30:32 > 0:30:37Something you consult at the beginning, to design the story,
0:30:37 > 0:30:39and then throw it away.
0:30:41 > 0:30:47At Warners I'm meeting with the people in the animation department.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50I'm working on the traditional animation.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53They've got it figured out
0:30:53 > 0:30:57that sometimes Bugs is the mentor to Daffy.
0:30:57 > 0:31:00They're speaking my language.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07ROBERT McKEE: This is what a producer faces in Hollywood.
0:31:07 > 0:31:12You're fortunate if one out of 100 projects submitted to you
0:31:12 > 0:31:15has even the promise of quality.
0:31:15 > 0:31:19Under that kind of pressure,
0:31:19 > 0:31:25people start looking for some type of tool that they can use
0:31:25 > 0:31:31to rework these mediocre screenplays into something that will work.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34Not a big hit, but it'll WORK.
0:31:42 > 0:31:47Joseph Campbell is simply another effort to make sense out of chaos.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54# Just whistle while you work
0:31:54 > 0:31:57WHISTLING
0:31:57 > 0:32:02# And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place... #
0:32:04 > 0:32:09CHRIS VOGLER: At one point, when I was working for the Disney company,
0:32:09 > 0:32:14I wrote a memo, about seven pages long, trying to explain to myself
0:32:14 > 0:32:21what were the working parts of a story and how Campbell's idea from mythology related to movies.
0:32:21 > 0:32:26So I translated Campbell's language of myth into movie language
0:32:26 > 0:32:29and gave movie examples.
0:32:29 > 0:32:35That memo was passed around. It had a certain power beyond my expectation -
0:32:35 > 0:32:42it became mandatory reading for executives and was faxed and Xeroxed all over town.
0:32:48 > 0:32:51When I showed it to some studio executives,
0:32:51 > 0:32:56it was too long at seven pages and they wanted me to condense it again.
0:32:56 > 0:33:02So I did a synopsis of my synopsis of his synopsis of world mythology.
0:33:07 > 0:33:14The heroic story which Hollywood tends to do always tends to follow the same pattern.
0:33:14 > 0:33:21The mistake if you are a storyteller is to follow that pattern as some sort of formula.
0:33:25 > 0:33:28CHRIS VOGLER: I always caution the writers
0:33:28 > 0:33:33not to drive with the map pasted to the windshield.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38This idea of The Hero's Journey is just a guideline.
0:33:39 > 0:33:44They're interested in The Hero's Journey. I don't have to sell them.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47They're already very hip to that.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50ROBERT MCKEE: Knowing how Hollywood works,
0:33:50 > 0:33:55if it hadn't been Campbell, it would have been somebody else.
0:33:55 > 0:33:57The problem is so fundamental.
0:33:57 > 0:34:03Hollywood makes 400-500 films a year. US independents make 1,000 films a year.
0:34:03 > 0:34:10Western Europe is going to make 700-800 films a year, and that's just the West, OK?
0:34:10 > 0:34:14And so you've got this huge outpouring of film,
0:34:14 > 0:34:18not to mention TV and all the rest of it,
0:34:18 > 0:34:22and God simply did not give out nearly enough talent
0:34:22 > 0:34:25to fill that volume with quality.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28MUSIC: "Whistle While You Work"
0:34:28 > 0:34:34So, Brad, what are your threshold guardians in this? What's holding this up?
0:34:34 > 0:34:39- Why isn't it moving ahead?- We've got threshold guardians in the script.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42'Campbell has stepped up a degree
0:34:42 > 0:34:47'from where he was when I started 15 years ago talking about this.
0:34:47 > 0:34:50'Now it's part of the common language.
0:34:50 > 0:34:54'And almost everybody has at least heard of it -
0:34:54 > 0:34:58'they know the basics of the idea.'
0:34:59 > 0:35:02- ..Maybe a part-time mentor.- Sure.
0:35:02 > 0:35:08'And there are a lot of film makers who are quite conscious of it
0:35:08 > 0:35:11'and are using it to plot their stories out
0:35:11 > 0:35:15'and finding it a great source of inspiration.'
0:35:15 > 0:35:19MUSIC ON SOUNDTRACK DROWNS SPEECH
0:35:21 > 0:35:28ROBERT MCKEE: What's curious about all this, as Campbell would be the first to admit,
0:35:28 > 0:35:30is that, long before Star Wars,
0:35:30 > 0:35:35any number - hundreds, thousands - of films and novels
0:35:35 > 0:35:38and even certain plays and whatnot
0:35:38 > 0:35:41were all Campbellesque.
0:35:41 > 0:35:43If Campbell hadn't written his book
0:35:43 > 0:35:50and George Lucas had never brought him to the public fore, it wouldn't matter.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53Because those forms are universal.
0:35:53 > 0:35:58People use them all the time instinctively, creatively, naturally.
0:35:58 > 0:36:02He made us aware of it, George Lucas made us aware of Joseph Campbell,
0:36:02 > 0:36:05but it was and always will be there.
0:36:05 > 0:36:09It's human. I mean, we just DO these things.
0:36:14 > 0:36:21A communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion.
0:36:21 > 0:36:26At last we can reveal ourselves to the Jedi.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31GEORGE MILLER: As the old religions fail,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34and as scary as it is,
0:36:34 > 0:36:38movies and television basically replace it.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41They are far more potent than church.
0:36:41 > 0:36:44They create who we are,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47or they help reflect who we are,
0:36:47 > 0:36:49and amplify who we are.
0:36:49 > 0:36:55I think Campbell, if he had lived a long time, would have got onto that.
0:36:55 > 0:37:00And as crummy as most of our movies and television are, that's it -
0:37:00 > 0:37:03that's what's happening to us.
0:37:51 > 0:37:55Subtitles by BBC Subtitling - 1999
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